Hawks' season ends in havoc

Greg Baum

THE AFL finals series is like Melbourne's weather, dangerously unsettled. Yesterday afternoon in Perth, Fremantle fashioned the second shock in 24 hours, beating Hawthorn by five goals to put an end to the Hawks' season. Weather was a metaphor, but not a factor: this match was played in bare-armed sunshine.

Hawthorn's day was emblematic of its season, governed by Murphy's Law. A plane carrying Hawthorn officials, as well as AFL dignitaries and media, was delayed by three hours in Melbourne yesterday morning, arriving in Perth less than an hour before the first bounce.

Then injury, inaccuracy and perhaps ill-judgment struck. The brilliant Cyril Rioli suffered a hamstring strain that would have put paid to his season even if the Hawks had advanced, and an ankle injury reduced Xavier Ellis to frustrated tears.

Sea of purple descends on Subiaco

So straitened, the least the Hawks needed was to make the most of their opportunities. In the first half, they kicked nine behinds in a row, for a half-time total of 1.11. It proved fatally extravagant.

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Hawthorn might have erred by playing Luke Hodge, who

had missed the previous week because of injury. Usually, he is the source of all that is good about the Hawks, but yesterday, he was contained by Adam McPhee. Hodge had 13 touches; some days he has three times that many.

Statistically, this result was an oddity. Two weeks ago, Fremantle sent a shadow team to play Hawthorn in a match in Launceston and lost by 116 points. The Dockers' strategy attracted widespread criticism, but this end justifies that means. As coach Mark Harvey noted before yesterday's game: ''We've seen them, but they haven't seen us.'' Now they have.

So ended an under-achieving season for Hawthorn. After beating Melbourne in round one, the Hawks lost seven in a row, rallied, faltered again, then by beating Collingwood in round 22 loomed as a force to be reckoned with in the finals. It was an illusion.

For Fremantle, this was only the second finals win of its short and mostly inglorious history. It can rightly feel proud. If more was expected of Hawthorn this season, the Dockers were on no-one's radar.

For their pains, they now play reigning (raining?) premiers Geelong, still smarting from Friday's loss to St Kilda, in a semi-final at the MCG next Friday night. It threatens to be ugly.

But pundits beware. Already, this finals series has rendered all speculation and prognostication redundant. This is the reality of finals football: it often confounds the certainties of the season.

All five remaining finals will be played in Melbourne, which introduces another X factor: unstable weather.

Seven years of drought and the roof on Etihad Stadium has meant that Melbourne-based clubs rarely play in the wet nowadays.

Wet weather football requires different skills, different tactics and a different mindset. Already, the intriguing has begun.

St Kilda, with one premiership in 114 years of VFL/AFL history, often is described in terms of long-standing drought. The Saints will be hoping that the breaking of one is an omen for the breaking of the other.

But the way the results are falling in this finals series, the premiership race may be like the federal election campaign, a cliffhanger.